Very disappointing...

A Masterpiece!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Never waste 90 minutes of your time on this terrible take on Civil War. Some old films were never good, and this is one of them. The story of 5 Cofederate deserters (Yellownecks, as they were called) could have been OK, but here it was not. Slow, poorly shot film is only good for the Florida Everglade views, animals, snakes, gators, jungles, bogs and rivers. The 5 actors are intermittently forgettable ad pathetic. They encounter almost every ordeal on the way and it is obvious which next they will come soon into. Nay, sirs, this was not good in the 50's, it is boring and dull now. What is especially bad, is that we feel no pity for them. The film is cold and bland, and the performance is rather mediocre. Just going slowly and very predictably. You know the end at the very beginning and you know it will be not cool to watch it with any interest. Utterly forgettable and banal

An interesting plot premise is killed with poor direction and a lot of overacting with Yellowneck. There's also a distinct lack of characters who you really root for to get out of the Everglades.Republic released this film in 1955 about five men who are Confederate Army deserters and not some of the greatest specimens of manhood you'll ever want to encounter. Lin McCarthy, Billl Mason, Harold Gordon, and Berry Kroeger are the deserters and from some of the names you know that by the type of roles they've played. Later on they're joined by Stephen Courtleigh, a colonel who deserted the Star And Bars. He's got pretensions, but deep down he's no better than the other four.For the one and there is only one who makes it there is then the minor problem of crossing 90 miles of ocean to Cuba. Still it is an achievement to have survived the Everglades and all that inhabit it.If you care to watch you can find out which one survives.

I have not seen this one since the 1960's but we would re-enact it when we played civil war. If I remember correctly these Confederates had been running a prison camp (3/07 I remembered wrong! It was the Seminole Village scene in the middle of the movie) and now (upon the near defeat of the south) were escaping to Cuba. (I guess as deserters according to the other comments.) In order to do so they have to pass thru the Everglade swamps where (like Heart of Darkness) things become more dangerous and evil as they go. Indians, alligators, snakes all finish off (except for one to tell the tale of course) the members of the party one by one. The snake pit was nice cause I did not like the guy who died in it.The scene I most remember is the quicksand scene where the Sergeant sinks and dies leaving the kid alone to finish the trek to Cuba. The rest of the troop dies in different ways. The film finishes with the kid, the one good guy in the film, walking out of the Jungle onto a beach where he looks across the sea in the direction of his destination, Cuba.This was an amusement park of horror. It is too bad that Arnold and Sly are too old now as I think it would make a good film to remake. Time is passing however and the casting of this thing would be a challenge. The film can be downloaded from eztakes.com but it is available on DVD if you search for it.It is really very good and the guy playing the officer has a great death scene!)

This modestly budgeted oddity from the mid-fifties is as good an example as I can think of of how to make something out of nothing. Set in the waning days of the Civil War, Yellowneck follows several Confederate army deserters in their flight through the Florida Everglades. The actors are all good and the predicament these characters are in is dramatized with a fair amount of realism. Poisonous snakes, insects and alligators abound, as these unfortunate men have gone from the hell of the Civil War into the frying pan of the swamp. They squabble amongst one another a good deal, but their biggest enemy is nature itself, which seems to be conspiring against them at every turn. One comes to like some of these men very much, and despise others. The pathetic nature of their plight is always apparent, and we cannot help but feel for them as they slog through the mud, their hopes diminishing with each passing day. A fine. psychologically provocative piece of film-making, in tone and sensibility, a sort of cross between Ambrose Bierce and Albert Camus.